Various types of machines have been provided in the past to separate or "single" bills from a stack. The separator or singler may be used for counting or other purposes. In some cases involving worn monetary bills, separators are used to separate or bills so that they can be passed on to a shredding machine, where the bills must be fed individually to assure efficient shredding. Whether used for counting or for shredding, the spacing or registration between the separated bills is often important. Registration assures that there is adequate and predetermined spacings between the separated bills so the separated bills may be related to subsequent machine operations.
When a large number of bills are involved, the separation of the bills must take place at relatively high speeds. This is necessary to minimize the amount of time and manual labor required and provide overall efficiency in the system with which the separating machine is employed.
The high speed machine must be capable of separating bills or coupons one at a time from a stack with accurate registration even when different types of bills or coupons are involved. For example, the normal monetary bills from a stack may range from raggedy, ripped bills to newer relatively stiff bills. Any machine using separating means to separate these types of bills must separate equally each of the bills, whether new or old.
In order to provide an efficient machine for separating bills and coupons, it is generally necessary to provide a constant pressure against the stack of bills as the individual bills are removed. If a constant pressure is not applied, more than a single bill may be removed or in some cases no bills at all will be removed.
While references to bills and coupons will be made throughout the specification, these are merely convenient terms and are also applicable to flexible items, generally paper, which may not normally be referred to as bills or coupons.